


Carsaib (doesn't) hatch a dragon

by electrumqueen



Category: Inheritance Cycle - Paolini
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-03
Updated: 2010-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-05 17:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/pseuds/electrumqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The adventures of Carsaib, Dragon Rider.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carsaib (doesn't) hatch a dragon

When Carsaib is fifteen, he leaves the desert. He's too scorched, too dry, too brittle and pale for that land, and when he runs it's to the Riders. He turns up on their door with a burlap bag and clothes half-falling off him, and none of the doorkeepers wants to wonder how he got over the water.

Someone sees something in him, then, something bright in the boy with the too-tan skin and the tired eyes, and Carsaib finds himself in the hatchery, sliding through rows of shining eggs like gems.

There's one that calls to him; warm crimson laced with veins of gold—it reminds him of all the things he loved about home. He reaches out a hand, and something in him settles, warm with joy.

Her name is _Syfara_; in the language of the desert it means _burn_, and she is everything fire should be. She is the missing half of him, that part of his soul that he didn't know he needed, and now he wonders how he _breathed _without her. She rests her head on his shoulder when they watch the sun fall, and she is his wings. She is the family he never had, not really, not truly, and she is the desert, the reason he was born there. She is _everything_, and he loves her like he's never loved anyone before.

When Carsaib is eighteen, and Syfara three, a Rider Vrael thought was dead returns, dragonless and hurting. Carsaib gawks like the rest of them, at the empty, shuttered eyes and the scars raking down the woman's face and he pulls Syfara's mind close, and slips away through the crowd, away from the woman who lost half her soul. Syfara hums, but she's worried. He can feel it.

By the time Carsaib is twenty, they are at war. Syfara's got armour, made for her, the kind that fits like a second skin, and so does Carsaib. They've done endless drills, and Carsaib's got blood roiling over and over in his mind, a lake of blood, and it blurs into his memories of sand until he can't think about home-that-was without feeling that gut-deep _no _that comes from killing.

Lyssara-the-Traitor is all anger and sharp edges and broken-hearted desperation, and Carsaib might've been sorry for her, if she hadn't taken his friends (_Lyr, her throat cut, blood on armour, and her dragon keening beside her; Cam, sword in hand, saying, “I'm fighting with her,”; Eryk and his green, falling too fast, and then Eryk waking, and screaming, so _empty—); but as it is, she has half of Ilirea with her, and the rest of them are falling fast.

He looks into her eyes, once, battle-lust surging high in him, and they're as empty as they were that day in Ilirea; he can't help but freeze. It's only Carsaib's wing-leader who stops him getting cut down, and Carsaib spends three days in the infirmary next to Morzan, gripping his hand so tight Kimar, who's pulling infirmary duty, has to tell him not to cut off circulation to the older man's remaining hand.

The sky is slate-grey, rain steady and light. Carsaib shrugs into his armour; helps Syfara with hers, and hopes they won't rust. Rusted armour is _hell _to fight in. He swings up onto Syfara's back, in that smooth easy motion that's become second-nature, and then they're airborne. (Airborne is a funny word, he thinks, but _true. _What is the sky if not home?)

The scattered remnants of his wing pull tight around him, and he looks around, wingmates conspicuous by their absence. He catalogues them, slowly, that ritual he knows all of them perform, before they fly. Honour the dead, honour the living. _Cam, gone to Her, Kyra, likewise; Doyle, dragonless; Lily, caught in “friendly fire”; Liam, suicide—_he lets their names and their natures and their circumstances wash over him, and then he says, _“Let's fly.”_

The wing rises too, and he realizes—by default he's their leader. He feels sick, low in his stomach, and Syfara is more vicious than usual. He looks into Lyssara's eyes, again, and they are the colour of the sky.

Carsaib doesn't reach twenty-one.

_Morzan's dragon screams, once, fire following the noise, and rakes her talons through the hatchery. A gold-red egg is caught by silver claw, and it shatters under the dragonfire and the pressure, yolk spilling out over straw and stone, a dangerous deadly sigil. _

_Three shadows circle, and see their way home._


End file.
